Karachi’s civil society take to the streets against government’s houbara policy

KARACHI: Holding multi-coloured placards and chanting slogans with fervour, denizens of Karachi protested at the Khadda Market against hunting permits being issued to elite foreigners.

An apex court had, in August of this year, banned the decision of the government to issue hunting permits for houbara bustards to Saudi royals. However, the government was considering lifting this ban and granting access to Saudi royals. In order to prevent this and voice their dissent towards the government’s intent, Karachi’s civil society gathered at the happening Khadda Market, to protest over hunting permits of the houbara bustard.

Chanting slogans and holding different placards which had messages imprinted on them in English, Urdu and Arabic, the crowd of about 30-40 people stated that they were against the hunting of migrating birds by Arab royals. One civil society activist Naeem Sadiq felt that the government was still providing hunting permits besides the court’s ban on it.

“The Supreme Court has already banned its hunting but the government wants it to be lifted now,” he said.

Another female protester was quite impassioned and questioned the reasoning of allowing foreigners to hunt rare birds on Pakistani soil.

“These are rare birds and come to Pakistan as our guests. No one has any right to kill these birds in Pakistan,” she said.

Why are some people coming from outside Pakistan given permits?” asked another female protester. “It is a wrong policy to permit some people to hunt birds on our land.”